Priority is claimed herein with respect to European Patent Application No. 00810921.7, filed in the European Patent Office on Oct. 5, 2000, the subject matter of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The invention relates to a device for feeding folded or unfolded signatures to a production line. Such a device includes a conveying rotor that removes stacked signatures from an adjacent signature magazine and which is provided with a recess along the approximately circular circumference. The signature is partially lifted off the stack by a synchronously driven separating member by applying suction to the signature front edge in the conveying direction. The recess in the conveying rotor functions to hold the front edge of a signature and forms a conveying gap together with a conveying belt that makes contact along parts of the circumference and is moved in the same direction.
A device of this type is disclosed, for example, in Swiss Patent CH-A-598 107 and is used for a faster processing of the increasingly higher numbers of signatures. The aforementioned reference provides for a mutually interacting pair of suction devices on the stack front, used for the preliminary separation of the signatures. Thus, a signature gripped at the front edge by respectively one suction device, can be transferred to a conveying rotor provided with several recesses along the circumference and can be further deflected by the latter around a deflection roller located below the stack and in the direction of dropping off. The signature is withdrawn by being carried along between the conveying rotor and the deflection roller, so that after one signature has dropped off, the following suction device can grip the following signature by the fold.
On the one hand, it is questionable whether an increase in output can be achieved with this embodiment when on the other the reliability is reduced.
It is an object of the present invention to create a device of the aforementioned type, which makes it possible to achieve an increase in output along with a high degree of reliability.
This object is solved according to the invention in that the separating element is provided with at least one suction head that is connected to a vacuum source. The suction head is attached to a control device control shaft, which is positioned parallel to the rotational axis of the conveying rotor and is attached to it, such that it can pivot. A structurally simple embodiment can be created in this way.